Race In Light In August: Joanna Burden, A White Racist Or A Black Anti-Racist?

Joanna Burden, a main character in Faulkner's Light in August (1932), plays a vital role in the Southern society, in the life of the hero Joe Christmas, and in exposing the theme of the novel as well.Joanna Burden has dedicated herself to the uplift of the black race in a white-dominant society. Yet when she tries to make a man of Joe Christmas -- a so-called "half-nigger" who is enclosed in racism and refuses to be raised, she is eventually murdered by him. And Joe Christmas pays his life for the murder in the end.Despite her dedication to the black race, Joanna Burden is regarded as a white racist by many critics. The representatives of this view are Professor Xiao Minghan (肖明翰), a famous Chinese scholar in Faulkner's works, and Professor Judith Bryant Wittenberg, a world famous specialist in the study of Faulkner. By construing the dialogue between little Joanna Burden and her father, Professor Xiao Minghan concludes in his The Study of William Faulkner that Joanna Burden and her father are white racists because they do not see the blacks as equal. By analyzing Joanna Burden's behavior towards Joe Christmas, Judith Bryant Wittenberg concludes in his Race in Light in August that Joanna Burden treats Joe as "racially Other" so that though she tries to raise Joe Christmas, she is a racist, a "benign" racist.But in my opinion, Joanna Burden is actually a black anti-racist. According to the Southern criteria for ethnicity, Joanna Burden's grandmother should be a Negro. Therefore, Joanna is also a black in the Southern terms. As a Southern "black", Joanna Burden not only survives racism but also helps the other blacks to rise above it. The dialogue between the father and daughter simply reveals their anti-racist attitude. By means of the dialogue, Joanna's father helps her realize the equality of the two races and offers her the best way to eliminate racism. Joanna Burden's efforts in uplifting the blacks materially, intellectually and morally also justify her anti-racist attitude. And her behavior towards Joe Christmas, including her forcing him to go to a black school and to work in a black law firm, is the very result of her love and responsibility for him and her purpose of anti-racism. But Joe Christmas has been dehumanized by racism. As a result, Joe's racist attitude leads to his misinterpreting Joanna's purpose. In fact, Joanna has devoted all her life to the career of anti-racism.The contrast between Joanna Burden's real black origin and her white racial identity exposes the absurdness of racism, while the contrast between Joanna Burden's efforts in uplifting the blacks, including Joe Christmas, and her final destruction caused by the "nigger" racist, reveal the dominance and evil of racism. Therefore, unscrambling Joanna Burden's real image will help readers to understand thoroughly the theme of race in the novel. Thus the whole society, including American whites, to cognize the absurdness, dominance and evil of racism and to eliminate racism on their own initiative.